“Do you know what Essential Thrombocythemia is?”
The waitress shook her head, the tips of her red hair dancing over her shoulders.
“It’s a rare blood disease. Mostly older women get it, but even then the odds are pretty slim that you’ll get it if you’re, say, ninety. Anyway, it was rare. And Raleigh was an outlier. She has ET, and the hospital in Hollis Falls recently treated a young woman with that disease.”
Staring back at him, the waitress wasn’t convinced.
“It’s rare,” he said, repeating himself. “So rare that you probably don’t have more than two or three instances of it in all of northern Michigan. But to have a young woman treated for it?” He stacked his fork with two bits of sausage and then raised them into his mouth.
“Okay.” The waitress gulped. “Good luck, and I hope you find her before the FBI does.”
“Again, she’s missing. Not wanted.” Was she deaf? What didn’t she understand?
At last, the waitress walked away, but Ethan stared after her while he chewed.
Strange girl. Made sense why she was still in Boyle Mills and not working at some law firm, startup, or bank like all of her friends from the University of Michigan or some other college. Shrugging to himself, he turned his attention out the window and watched the pedestrians—more traffic on the street now that the sun was out, it seemed.
He noticed, also, that the community health center was now open for business.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Once he finished his breakfast and paid the bill, Ethan walked the main street. Roughly one third of the diagonal parking spots were now occupied, mostly by domestic pickup trucks and SUVs, but there were also two police cars out front of the diner, which he found odd. Had the waitress called the FBI after he asked her about the woman on their missing person’s poster?
Ethan noticed a few homeless-looking people slipping into and out of the community health center. By the time he strolled past its door, he counted at least six that had come and gone. That number seemed like a lot for such a small town—where did they sleep, because it wasn’t on any of the benches on the fake-stone, concrete sidewalks along the main street.
When he crossed and started back toward the diner, he noticed a few more people heading into the center, but these people were mostly older. Probably retired, like the patrons at the diner.
Approaching the two police cruisers, he heard the diner’s door open and the two officers appeared, smiling after a decent meal. They strutted toward their respective cruisers, both of them noticing Ethan and allowing their stares to linger. He was a stranger to their town, after all, an anomaly, something that stood out as much as a Jaguar in a sea of domestic pickups.
Ethan nodded at them, and the two cops nodded back.
Once he heard the cruisers’ engines start up and the cars drive off, Ethan settled onto a bench next to a tree. From this vantage point, he could watch the crowds coming and going from that health center, the grocery store, as well as a video store that not only sold ice cream but fixed broken computers and offered digital photography lessons and Photoshop tutorials.
But then something caught his attention, and Ethan sat straighter.
Across the street, a woman dressed in hospital-green scrubs exited the grocery store with her arm around a frail-looking man with no teeth. He also had recessed eyes, sharply pronounced cheekbones and a slow, slow way about him that made him look drugged or terminal.
But it wasn’t so much the dying man—he had to be dying, nobody looked that bad from this distance and moved so slowly—as the woman in the scrubs.
Gone was her long, curly blonde hair, replaced by straight, dark brown hair that stretched just past her jaw. But what remained was the way she moved. The smile. Her kind nature as she insisted the dying old man take the food she’d just purchased—a submarine sandwich or something else that appeared to be that shape and size—and guided him to the bench in front of the community health center’s front door.
And then, when she looked up and searched main street—she knows I’m watching, she knows I’m near—when her eyes finally found his, Ethan knew beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the woman across the street was the only woman he’d ever loved. The moment he’d dreamed about for the past seven and a half years had finally arrived.
Raleigh.
Standing up and opening his mouth as if to speak words that wouldn’t come—he couldn’t even breathe it seemed—he accepted that he’d finally found her!
She’s still alive.
She was still beautiful. Still perfect.
Still the woman whose heart beat in tune with his own.
So why did she look so scared to see him now that he’d finally tracked her down?
Chapter Fifty-Five
Something was wrong. As Ethan caught himself shouting Raleigh’s name and sprinting across the street, he noticed that the brunette with the short hair also started running. But instead of coming toward him with open arms like he’d expected, the woman in the hospital-green scrubs was hurrying away from him.
As if Ethan was the lunatic here. Have I been right about that?
“Raleigh! It’s me!” It was impossible to not sound desperate, what with all of his emotions peaking.
By the time Ethan crossed the main street—he didn’t even look both ways, but then again few people probably bothered to look before crossing any street in Boyle Mills—the woman that had to be Raleigh had disappeared inside the community health center.
“Leave her alone, asshole,” someone said.
Before heading inside after his missing wife, Ethan stopped and stared back at the man on the bench, the one who had just called him an asshole and told him to leave her alone.
“That’s right,” the man said, his voice as slow as everything else about him. “I know about you. She told me everything.”
Frowning, Ethan scrutinized the haggard man on the bench. What was he talking about? But then Ethan realized that he was wasting time, so he spun around and continued toward the health center’s front door.
Except the man on the bench hadn’t been joking. He really wanted him to leave Raleigh alone, judging by the way he clasped onto Ethan’s arm, digging his crooked and cracked fingernails into the tender spot above his elbow.
When Ethan tried to tear his arm loose, the bum only tightened his grip. He even went so far as to form a fist with his free hand, winching it back.
“Think again, asshole,” the man said.
Moving quickly, Ethan jammed the heel of his open hand into the man’s face, catching him on the chin and snapping his head back. That did the trick; the homeless man released Ethan’s arm and stumbled backward, tripping over his flimsy, big shoes and falling against the trunk of a tree.
The man mumbled something, but Ethan was already inside the community health center, unsure what he would encounter until he was inside the busy waiting area. There was a receptionist behind a desk and an armed security officer in the corner. Both of them looked up—the receptionist from her tablet computer, the security officer from his phone—and took an immediate interest in Ethan.
Right away, he was cornered, the crazy outsider in Boyle Mills. The others in the waiting room—two men and one woman, who appeared to be from the same neighborhood as the homeless jackass collapsed against the tree outside; two couples and a few senior women—watched on. Itching for some action in this snore of a town.
“Where is she?” Ethan asked, reaching into his pocket for his phone.
But the security officer was already marching toward him, one hand unclipping his holster, the other reaching for Ethan himself. “Mister, you need to calm down.”
“Raleigh!” Ethan shouted toward the back of the health center. “Raleigh, where are you?”
Someone screamed, one of the senior women.
Ethan glanced at the security officer and saw that he was pointing his Taser at him.
At last, Ethan found the image of his wife on his phone. H
e pointed it at the security officer. “My wife,” he said. “I just want to talk to my wife.”
Without moving his eyes from Ethan, the officer told the receptionist to call the police. “This guy’s going down.”
“Please, I just want to—”
It was too late. The Taser flashed an electric spark before it burst toward him like a meteor, taking him down with the force of a lightning bolt.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Ethan opened his eyes and found that he was seated on a waiting room chair, inside an examination room, handcuffs securing him in place. There were two police officers—the same two he’d seen leaving the diner earlier—one on each side of him, both male, carrying on a conversation as if Ethan weren’t even in the room. They had the same physique as Paul Hyatt and Thomas Braun from three years ago, which meant they were muscular and part of the same weightlifting club. The security officer who’d tasered him, not so much. But he stood in the corner next to a poster of the human musculature system, his arms crossed as he listened in on the conversation between the two officers.
The security officer was the first to notice that Ethan had returned to the conscious world. As he pushed himself away from the wall, the security officer’s arms fell to his sides and he gave a serious nod to his victim. One of the officers turned around, bent forward and gave Ethan a big smile, so big it bordered on sarcastic. So Ethan didn’t exactly expect the friendly cop to present him with a welcome package and hand over the keys to Boyle Mills.
Instead, that cop said, “You caused a bit of a scene for us, didn’t you?”
Not quite sure how to respond, Ethan tried to swallow the dryness in his mouth.
“Mind telling us what you’re doing in Boyle Mills, Mr. Vernon?” Same cop, same friendly smile and small-town hospitality in his tone. Like he wanted to help him achieve his goals, whatever they might be.
“He assaulted Moe on his way in,” the security officer said, as if trying to remind the friendly cop that they weren’t exactly dealing with a welcomed guest.
“Looking for my missing wife,” Ethan said, his voice cracked and dry.
“Uh huh. Your wife.” The friendly cop gave a nod, and then the other cop leaned forward and got into Ethan’s face. This second one didn’t appear so friendly. He had aviator glasses hanging from the collar of his shirt, and a square jaw with zero facial fat that made him look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Terminator version, not the Kindergarten Cop version.
“Listen, Vern,” Terminator said, and he had an accent, too. If not Boston, it was somewhere from the east coast. “We got you on assault after what you did to Moe—”
“He grabbed my arm,” Ethan said, and when he tried to show them his arm, the cuffs stopped him, reminding him that he was secured to the chair. “I’m bruised. I’m sure what I did can be classified as self-defense.” Ethan glanced down at his hands, saw the cuffs and made a useless show of opening his hands and allowing the cuffs’ chains to pull tight. When he looked up again, he made eye contact with the friendly cop. “Listen, I’m sorry for defending myself. But my wife’s been missing for over seven and a half years. A nurse that works here looks exactly like her, so I followed her into this . . .” What was this place, anyway? “. . . clinic, and the next thing I know, your rent-a-cop electrocuted me.”
The security officer’s face turned red, but he was smart enough to not bite Ethan’s bait. He settled back against the wall and crossed his arms.
“I’m sure you’ve run something of a background check on me.”
“Sure have,” Terminator said, “and you’ve had some run-ins with the Chicago Police Department, haven’t you, Vern?” Terminator glanced over at the friendly cop and squinted, as if in disgust. “Records show domestic assault. This guy here’s a real treat.”
Until that moment, Ethan had truly believed that friendly cop had been putting on an act, just pretending to be a nice guy. There was a reason the movies used the concept of good cop-bad cop. Except here in the Boyle Mills Community Health Center, it seemed that the friendly cop was legitimately friendly. He didn’t seem to agree with Terminator’s suggestion. Not entirely, anyway.
“He was charged, sure, but never convicted of anything.”
Terminator stared blankly at his partner.
“In fact,” Ethan offered, breaking up their staring contest and drawing their attention back to him, “I have an official letter of apology from the District’s Commander.”
The friendly cop’s eyebrows rose as he glanced over at Terminator. He seemed impressed. “That’s something.”
“So, gentlemen and officers,” Ethan continued, aware that he starting to sound a little desperate, “please explain to me why I was electrocuted and why I’m now wearing handcuffs when I’m a good guy, just like you.”
Terminator didn’t like him. Ethan saw that; he wasn’t an idiot, he could translate the sneer on Terminator’s face as distaste.
“And, can I see my wife now?”
The friendly cop leaned forward. “I’m sorry, Mr. Vernon. None of the nurses here recognize you.”
“Really? May I speak with those nurses?” Ethan asked, his heart pounding, his palms getting clammy. He swore he’d seen Raleigh. From across the street, he never would’ve recognized his wife if it hadn’t been her, one hundred percent. “One hundred percent.”
For the first time since this little private interrogation had started, the friendly cop’s smile melted away. In fact, he frowned and seemed somewhat skeptical of Ethan now. “One hundred percent what, Mr. Vernon?”
Ethan noticed that Terminator and the security officer were also staring at him, their eyes narrowed with curiosity. They wanted to hear his answer.
With his heart threatening to short circuit, Ethan gave a nervous nod. “I want to be one hundred percent certain that Raleigh isn’t here. I need to know, because that’s why I’m here.” He divided his attention across all three of his observers. “I live for my wife, officers. She’s everything to me. If I need to get arrested, let’s get this over with. But I’m not leaving Boyle Mills until I see for myself that Raleigh isn’t here.”
Terminator let out a disgusted huff as he shook his head. “This is insane,” he said.
But the friendly cop clearly had a heart. The way his stare remained glued to Ethan’s face, he seemed moved by the speech. After pressing his lips together, the cop gave a definitive nod before standing straight, pulling up his pants by the waist, and then turning to Terminator.
“You’re not listening to this bullshit,” Terminator said to the friendly cop.
“Actually, I’m on his side,” the friendly cop said. He then faced the security officer, who pushed away from the wall again, straightened his back and met the friendly cop’s gaze. “Go and round up the on-duty nurses. We’ll bring them into this room so Mr. Vernon can see for himself that his wife isn’t here and he’s best to be on his way home to Chicago.”
Offering a simple nod as confirmation, the security officer left the room. Once he was gone, Terminator said, “This is the craziest batshit thing I’ve ever heard of.”
But Ethan knew better; it wasn’t crazy because Raleigh was indeed there, one of the nurses working at the health center.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
There were only four nurses at the community health center that day. The first two were so far unlike Raleigh—the latest incarnation of her, the one with the short hair—that Ethan nearly laughed when the security guard escorted them into the room.
The first nurse was considerably larger, or “severely obese” according to the BMI chart on the wall next to the musculature poster, and she had long, golden hair that stretched halfway down her back. The second nurse had the darkest skin he’d ever seen and could have been a television actress with that smile and figure.
The third woman they paraded through the examination room had short, dark hair. Just like the version of Raleigh he’d seen outside.
“Could this be the woman you though
t was your wife, Mr. Vernon?” the friendly cop asked while the nurse stood closer to the door in case she needed to make a quick escape. She had Raleigh’s slim figure. But not her eyes; Raleigh never looked half as scared as this woman. And her scrubs were light blue, not hospital green.
Ethan shook his head and looked away.
“Can I leave now?” the nurse asked.
The security guard opened the door and left with her.
When the rent-a-cop returned with the fourth nurse, the friendly cop asked Ethan the same question. Ethan studied the fourth nurse a little closer; her long legs, the hospital-green scrubs, the short hair. Except this woman also wasn’t Raleigh. It was possible she’d been the one helping the homeless guy outside, so Ethan asked her.
“Were you the one who came out of the grocery store to help that man outside? I think his name is Moe?”
Pressing her lips together, she shook her head. “Not me, sir. I’m sorry.”
Terminator stepped closer, trying to get into Ethan’s face. “Happy now? It’s time for you to vacate our town, Vern.”
As the security officer started to lead that fourth nurse out of the small examination room, Ethan cleared his throat. “Who else works here?” It wasn’t directed solely to the nurse, but she stopped and turned around anyway.
“Just the four of us today. We’re all volunteers.”
Shaking his head, Ethan ran his tongue along the insides of his dry mouth. “There’s the receptionist, right? Anyone else who might have short, dark hair like yours? Scrubs like yours? Maybe a little taller, goes by the name Raleigh?”
The nurse glanced over at the friendly cop, then to Terminator before settling her eyes on Ethan. But he wasn’t watching the nurse so much as the friendly cop, whose face seemed to change. Slightly, but it changed, and Ethan noticed it because now the friendly cop was staring hard at the fourth nurse, as warning her to keep her mouth shut. Not so friendly anymore, Ethan realized.
The Last Night (The Last Series Book 2) Page 23
